California comes in at the number one spot with 77 municipalities (along with five counties or other state parks). The Sunshine State of Florida ranks third with 66 towns, Texas follows in fourth place with 63 and Missouri rounds out the top five with 33 municipalities with RLCs.

While the IIHS only counts the total number of municipalities and counties using red light cameras, it does not count total cameras deployed. If they did, Illinois might rank number one.

The reason is, the City of Chicago has the most RLCs in the entire U.S. with 384. That’s more cameras in one city than the total number of cameras in entire states.

Perhaps Illinois can re-double its efforts and snag the number one spot from the Golden State.

This actually may not be too difficult as the IIHS list is missing at least five Illinois towns that currently do have active RLC programs (Rosemont, Hillside, Chicago Heights, Justice & Park Ridge) and possibly more.

6 Responses to Illinois Ranks Second In Red Light Camera Enforcement?

With the $2 million dollar bribery scandal with Redflex in Chicago, the recent opening of a federal probe into that corruption, and the publishing of Alderman Burke’s efforts to question the Redflex contract awarding procedure many years ago —- Chicago residents should be “marching on city hall” to demand an absolute end to red light and speed camera programs.

The Mayor and all the camera supporting Aldermen should be removed from office for violating the basic principles of representing the best interests of their constituents.

Operating these predatory for-profit ticket camera programs is about money, not safety. They are set up to issue most citations to very safe drivers tricked into small non-dangerous technical fouls with deliberately improper and less-safe engineering.

The entire process is corrupt and every official who supports it should be removed from office. Replace them with officials who honor their duty to represent the best interests of their constituents, not officials trying to fill the treasury with fines from safe drivers.

All the speed cameras are not going to do the job of getting rid of the dangerous drivers. Handing out tickets to drivers who are going 6 miles above the speed limit is nothing but a municipal money grab.

While our midget Mayor claims that these speed camera are what’s needed to keep kids safe, the real problem for school kids is dangerous drivers who blow stop signs, ignore cross walks, and generally drive like a**holes in school zones. How about setting up roving police stings near school zones, so police can find and ticket the irresponsible drivers who present the real danger to Chicago kids.

Jeff’s solution would be far more effective for safety, but safety has almost nothing to do with Chicago’s addition to camera ticket revenue.

It looks like Chicago wants to challenge Washington DC for the most revenue to be collected with the predatory ticket camera cash registers. DC is up to about $95 million per year – using the same corrupt engineering tactics that Chicago uses. Chicago must want the trophy for the most revenue extracted from safe drivers.

Posted speed limits are set well below the actual, normal, safe traffic flow speeds. Yellow light intervals are set well short of the length required for the actual, normal safe traffic flow speeds.

Engineers who agree to mis-engineer the traffic safety parameters in this way to create more ticket revenue for their city should have their Professional Engineers licenses revoked for cause.

James C. Walker, National Motorists Association (frequent visitor to Chicago, including an upcoming trip)